What about the creative leap?

This week I saw four new ad campaigns. In terms of communication all four of them were very strong. Their clearly was a good strategy behind each one, the planner had done a good job....and in two cases the planners brief was also the creative output!

No, I am not trying to confuse. I have always believed that unless a planner gives a good crutch or builds a nice platform the creative cannot take that critical jump to produce breakthrough work. I also know that a good creative person is a good planner also. So a lot of times a good planning brief/strategy turns out to be the creative too. Nothing wrong in that but as some people pointed out in my previous blog, creative has to entertain too. A good piece of creative not only informs and makes the consumer inquisitive but also entertains. And it is the entertainment that creates an affinity for repeat viewing while creating an emotional bond.

Still confused then let's look at the four campaigns I spoke about.

The first one was for Vodafone Red postpaid. Here the task was difficult. The brief must have been to promote a 3 in 1 offer (data +minutes+SMS). I think the planning mind must have drafted a brief to the effect 'One good thing does not attract but many good things available all together is a winner'. And the creative leap was about this one man band who can play the flute, guitar, drums....all together to produce a nice symphony. A brilliant analogy which entertains and delivers the perfect message. Not just information but also creative which is memorable and one you would love to watch again. Do you agree? (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tfGWo-gDt6s)


The second example is of Indian soccer league. I think the brief here was very simple. Create pan India excitement about the new football league. The planner, in my mind took it one step further by identifying a platform "The whole country is involved in football" or maybe even "Let's Football". This is clearly reflected in the film. It is a nice montage of people from all walks of life, from all geographies playing football. Is it entertaining.....? not to me as I got a sense of deja vu...seen this, done that. For me it did not take the creative leap but was a good interpretation of the brief. Not a leap. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7CPAV3-PM18)

The next one is controversial. It has received rave reviews on social media, but I guess somewhere it has missed the trick. This is the Jabong.com Be You campaign. It has got many things going for it. It's a refreshing break from the various offers and discounts and range and happy satisfied family ads that various ecommerce sites have unleashed on TV. It has a good sound track (but it's not an anthem, please!), great casting but in my mind it never progressed beyond the planner's brief. Be yourself, do not follow others and all that the voice over says is what the planning mind has put down. But did it break the mould and take the creative leap? Will you want to see this ad again? Does it entertain or just informs? Almost like the Indian soccer league ad it has nice montage shots from people across India wearing different fashionable clothes and a deep sounding philosophy as voice over. It will definitely resonate with the social media types 40+ audience. But I am not sure it will resonate with the cool young India. Be the judge...(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bxfuSWttOFU).


And finally, my favourite. It could have fallen into the Indian soccer league trap. It could have played out the planner's brief, but it took the leap. This is the champions league t20, nights are back campaign. The planning mind must have said that t20 nights are exciting. The creative took that a step forward reminiscing about the exciting t20 nights. How those nights were special. How those nights made people do things that they usually did not, just to watch the matches. How people became nostalgic about those nights. They did not fall for some great shots or goose pimply moments of the previous editions, they did not depend upon montages. They created their own vocablury and language and regaled the watcher. This is, in my mind is by far a path breaking campaign for a sports event. Even if you are not a cricket fan you will agree (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G93Nz4X9ZPA)

Would be nice to have your views.
 

I have always believed that advertising is the favourite punching bag of everyone. My uncle, your aunt, her granny, his mistress, that one’s maid, next door neighbour’s driver…everyone has an opinion on an ad. Like it, love it, hate it, adore it…advertising as a profession has through the ages had many critics and critiques. After all it is not called the world’s second oldest profession for nothing. Even Confucius had, in my opinion unwittingly commented on the same. Read on to see what historians, authors, philosophers, economists etc had to say about advertising. In no particular order or preference.

The naysayers
Page after page, advert after advert. Lipsticks, undies, tinned food, patent medicines, slimming cures, face-creams. A sort of cross-section of the money world. A panorama of ignorance, greed, vulgarity, snobbishness, whoredom and disease- George Orwell, author.
The real lie that advertising tells is not so much in what it shows, but in what it leaves out- Stefano Beni, Italian satirical writer, poet & journalist.
Advertising, a judicious mixture of flattery and threats- Stephen Leacock, author.
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better- George Santayana, philosopher.
There’s no difference between the products. If the products really were different, people would buy the one that's better. Advertising teaches people not to trust their judgment. Advertising teaches people to be stupid- Carl Sagan, astronomer.
Advertising departments, as you know, are crawling with people whose frontal lobes are so underdeveloped that if you flatter them a bit they'll swear shit is platinum- Ryu Murakami, novelist, filmmaker.
Gatekeepers and people that work in marketing are suckling pigs at the helm of Satan’s phallus. They are the death of art, and ultimately the death of the human spirit- Paul Huhn, author.
Advertising is not only the graffiti on our streets, but also the graffiti that tags the surface of our malleable minds- L.V. Hall, author
Advertising design, in persuading people to buy things they don`t need, with money they don`t have, in order to impress others who don`t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today- Victor Papanek, designer, teacher.
It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money- G.K.Chesterton, author, journalist.
If I were asked to name the deadliest subversive force within capitalism--the single greatest source of its waning morality--I should without hesitation name advertising. How else should one identify a force that debases language, drains thought, and undoes dignity? If the barrage of advertising, unchanged in its tone and texture, were devoted to some other purpose--say the exaltation of the public sector--it would be recognized in a moment for the corrosive element that it is. But as the voice of the private sector it escapes this startled notice. I mention it only to point out that a deep source of moral decay for capitalism arises from its own doings, not from that of its governing institutions- Robert. L. Hellbroner, economist.
Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission- Fred Allen, comedian.


The definers
The principles underlying propaganda are extremely simple. Find some common desire, some widespread unconscious fear or anxiety; think out some way to relate this wish or fear to the product you have to sell; then build a bridge of verbal or pictorial symbols over which your customer can pass from fact to compensatory dream, and from the dream to the illusion that your product, when purchased, will make the dream come true. They are selling hope.

We no longer buy oranges, we buy vitality. We do not just buy an auto, we buy prestige. And so with all the rest. In toothpaste, for example, we buy not a mere cleanser and antiseptic, but release from the fear of being sexually repulsive. In vodka and whisky we are not buying a protoplasmic poison which in small doses, may depress the nervous system in a psychologically valuable way; we are buying friendliness and good fellowship, the warmth of Dingley Dell and the brilliance of the Mermaid Tavern. With our laxatives we buy the health of a Greek god. With the monthly best seller we acquire culture, the envy of our less literate neighbors and the respect of the sophisticated. In every case the motivation analyst has found some deep-seated wish or fear, whose energy can be used to move the customer to part with cash and so, indirectly, to turn the wheels of industry. – Aldous Huxley, writer.
Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, - it largely increases the product –P.T. Barnum- Showman, businessman, author, philanthropist
The believers
The codfish lays ten thousand eggs. The homely hen lays one. Codfish never cackles to tell you what she has done. And so we scorn the codfish, while the humble hen we prize, which only goes to show you that it pays to advertise!- Nikhil Sharda, writer, filmmaker.
You could write the best book in the world but if nobody knows about it, it is nothing- Brendon Reece Taylor, author.
Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does- Steuart Henderson Britt, historian, culture critic,musician.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising- Mark Twain, author.
You don't sell the product, you sell the philosophy. When you sell a product, you have customers, when you sell a philosophy, you have believers- Soumeet Lanka, writer.
The alluders
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell- Confucious, philosopher.
Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists- Sara Sheridan, writer.
Advertising, an art, is constantly besieged and compromised by logicians and technocrats, the scientists of our profession who wildly miss the main point about everything we do…-George Lois, art director.
The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember that there once existed a connection between them. Today, on television commercials, propositions are as scarce as unattractive people. The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama--a mythology, if you will--of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claim are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it
- Neil Postman, author, media theorist.

The seed thought for this blog originated from my last blog (No, the client is not the king https://vikasmehta19.blogspot.in). Nowadays brands keep on changing communication agency relationships almost every season. Agency folks while looking at future horizons keep looking over their shoulders more often, scared that another agency may get into the picture. And the reasons are myriad. Lower fees, personnel changes at the client or at the agency, lack of relationship, failure to understand the issues at hand.....

Yet, amongst all this chaos there are agencies and clients who have had long term relationships. Agencies like JWT, Lowe, O&M, Mudra.... and clients like Unilever, Asian Paints, Idea, GSK, Pidilite, Rasna.... have been faithful to each other for decades.

Client agency relationship is no different than a successful or unsuccessful marriages. And funnily enough the reasons for long term or short term client agency relationships are also very similar. So let me try and list down a few factors which contribute to long term relationships or the lack of it.

1) Equal partnership: A relationship is strong when there is a mutual respect and understanding. Understanding that each brings something worthwhile to the table. Understanding that it is not a master slave relationship. The agency must understand the brand and the products as well if not better than the brand manager. The agency team must be knowledgeable enough to stand in for the marketing team if required. The client must be a fair remunerator. He must realise that even the agency is running a business. And if the agency cannot make money, what right it has to advise the client on how to make money? In short behave like ideal pati and patni.

2) Command respect, do not demand it: Applies to both. Client should not think because it's their money, because they have the freedom to hire and fire, the agency must listen to whatever they say. They must command that respect by being clear, transparent and focussed in their problem assessment, briefs and creative judgement. The agency should expect a client to listen to them and buy into their ideas by the sheer weight of its ideas, creative solutions and consistency in the work and not because they are supposed to be creative or because they have a creative reputation. Don't think that the pati has a right to boss or the patni a right to nag.

3) Inspire: A client should be always looking to inspire the agency and the agency inspiring the client to inspire. Are the clients thorough with their briefs? Do the briefs excite or are they just a diarrhoea of words? Can the brands be experienced by the agency? I remember on a motorcycle brand once the client got the agency to test drive the bike and ended with the words "Feel the power between your legs?" And the campaign that came out of it was mind blowing. Hmm pati and patni sweetly coochie cooing into each others ears.

4) Stimulate: This is very important in a relationship and the onus for this usually falls with the agency. Does the agency have sessions with clients to share the bigger picture of what's happening beyond his category and geography? Does the agency share and discuss different art forms with client. Movies, sculptures, exhibitions....? Have you met to discuss Cannes winners? Have you been to the film festival together? It is very easy to get jaded in a relationship. The same old meetings with the same people and the same discussions about the same brands. Stimulation replaces the monotony. Remember when the children are packed off to the parent's house for a candlelight dinner!?

5) Distract from temptation: In a relationship both sides have enough temptations to stray. The client will always be wooed by your competitors. Different agency will always be around trying to pitch or present exciting ideas. He will get impressed with a new team with new thinking and even lower remuneration cost. It is therefore important that the agency stimulates and has its own version of the same. Bring a new perspective, get sessions organised where you get a different team to share its thought with the client and even the agency team. Otherwise there are enough wohs waiting around to pounce on the spouse.

6) Be proactive: Remember how you surprised your better half with a surprise birthday party or an unexpected gift. Why not do the same with your client? No, I don't mean throwing parties and giving gifts. Be proactive. Present new work when not asked for. Write your own brief and share with client. Go and meet the consumers and present insights. Meet up with his sales force and understand any distribution or pricing or sales promotion issues. Have a solution for the same? Don't wait for the client to ask you to do something.

7) Tolerance: You may not like the fact that your husband can never be on time for any social occasion or you may loathe your wife's gossipy friends. But hey, there are enough positives in your spouse to overlook some such negatives. Isn't that tolerance? You give them leeway. The same is between the client and the agency. Sometimes the client briefs are pathetic. So you step up and rework his brief. You don't just whine or go into a negative tailspin. Sometimes the agency delays jobs. But don't they make up with work which is absolutely smashing? Don't wait or look to find faults. Forgive some.

8) Me time: Both pati and patni do need some time on their own. The pati wants to go out for a drink with his friends or sleep late on Sundays without being disturbed, The wife revels in kitty party with her friends or going for a mushy movie. So don't be upset if the agency wants some more time as its people want to attend an awards show in Goa. Or if the client is spending more time in solving an industry issue with his competitors and for all you know meeting with a who. Maybe he will realise how valuable you are when he meets a woh!

9) Celebrate milestones together: So after giving each other some me time also remember to share some good moments together. A particular campaign increased market share. Go out celebrate with the whole team. A piece of work was honoured by the industry feel good for your agency and show it. Don't you do the same when your spouse achieves success?

10) Build your own rules along the way: There is never a fixed way to do everything. Treat the above as a prototype but build your own model for a long term agency client relationship. And please do remember to share that model.

Finally, go watch Pati, Patni aur woh if you haven't watched it till now.

Advertising has for long been bracketed as a service industry. Excuse me, are you saying that what we do is the same as hotels, restaurants, call centres......? No disrespect meant for these industries but I for one do not think we can be bracketed with them.

That is what I think is the core of what is wrong with us. We are in a communication business. By definition communication is a two way process. Someone says or talk to someone else. The recipient understands the communication and either reacts to it or ignores it. If the reaction is positive then it adds to the communicators bottom line and if it is negative or there is no reaction at all then the communication has obviously failed. Where is the service factor in it?

Of course all communication agencies are purveyor of service but by that definition all brands and products provide some service. So let's lay this service industry mindset to rest.

This mindset of being a service industry means the client is the king. He is always right.  Because he is paying for the communication. I am sorry but client is not the king...it is the consumer who is the king. We try and mould our communication to the client's mindset. Will he buy this? Will he approve this?  That's so wrong. We have to convince the client that his consumer will buy it. If we aim to produce the work which the client likes and which fails with the consumer, then anyways the client will not continue with us. So why do we want to just suck up to him and do not give him our honest viewpoint.

The clienst pay us to be their consultant, their advisors and their partners. Not to be their yes men and lackeys. They are looking for partners who understand their consumers and can suggest the best way to engage with them. So unless we are honest to the consumer we will never do our job properly. Even if it means standing upto the client and telling him that he is wrong. Don't just say it because you feel he is wrong but show him why you could be right and he could be wrong.

And that's why we must change our remuneration structure. Right communication impacts the clients bottomline in a big way, similarly wrong communication causes equal grief. We must insist that our remuneration is based on results. Pay us a basic fees which covers our costs but if we want to make money then our work must work. It must show results.

Once we know that making money is dependent on the success of our work then we will not be working as in service industry. We will not be client's yes men. We will voice our viewpoint. We will fight in what we believe. We will ultimately do work which will show results. And we will be proud communication people.

Another advantage with this way of working is that campaign goals will be well defined with result parameters also discussed before hand. This in turn helps the client to articulate a better brief, the most common bane of all agencies.

I think most client's will love it too. They will have an agency which is appointed or retained with a performance based criteria. They will not always have to look at ways to cut fees or look out every year for a new agency which will charge less.

And if there are clients who will not agree to this then an agency better be wary. Because it could mean that the client is not looking for an able partner but a yes man. It would mean that the client considers himself as the king and the agency its vassal. Better not to be involved with such clients.

The problem is mostly with the agency. I think many, if not most of us are not confident of our work. We hesitate to take up the challenge of being result oriented. We fear that we may be not successful. So we want to play safe. Give us a decent fees upfront. Everything else can be a bonus. We are happy to earn averagely and then we blame the client for paying us poorly.

The interesting part is that there always have been clients who want an independent agency and not "his master's voice". When I joined this industry in the mid eighties, I had one such client, Kitply. We launched the brand and in fact created a new category. From day one the client was very clear."I will accept all your recommendations because you are the experts in this field. You understand the consumer and tell me what to do. But if your recommendations fail then you are out." And he was true to his word. He never interfered with creative, in fact he vetoed even his family's suggestions if we did not agree to the same. And we continued with him for a decent period of time.

In today's day and age where technology and new medium makes it easy to track the success or failure of a campaign it is surprising that most agencies are working on an outdated model. And continue to regard themselves as a service industry, servicing the client, treating him like a king. Pity!

 

Advertising as we know it has always had it superstars. Not only internationally but also in India. When I joined advertising it was Alyque Padamsee who along with Mohammed Khan was the doyen of the Indian advertising industry. Alyque of course, was famous for his English theatre too. This was in the era of print and in print Mohammed was the God. Of course, the world of advertising in print at that time was dominated by English advertising and the reach and fame of these gentlemen was limited to the Indian speaking audience.

The advent of TV changed the scenario. With its wide reach, the opportunity to speak in the local idiom opened a new world for the industry. Non English took centrestage and the likes of Piyush, Prasoon and Balki were its new purveyors.TV also encouraged a move from information to story telling. Soon Cadbury's Dairy Milk, Fevicol, Vodafone, Surf Excel, Happydent, Tata Tea, Saint Gobain etc became the talk of the nation. TV also gave the creator of these campaigns a medium to talk about their work.

So now with the digital wave on us where a 30 sec commercial is not necessarily the norm, will we see the end of such creative superstars? These great storytellers who used the TV media so brilliantly to build brands, will they have no successors?

I think the answer is already around. In the last few years except for Aggy, no new superstar has arrived. I suspect one reason for the same is that the work of creative has changed. When TV was the lead media the focus was to produce a great campaign around a TVC. That focus has changed. It is no longer a TV lead game. Now its about how do we use digital media? Its now about how to go viral? Its about how we involve the consumer? The trick is not just in TVC but on how to take the TVC further.

There is no denying that the idea is still core to the communication. One needed a great idea for a TVC and one needs a big idea for a digital campaign too. But the subtle change that has come in has been that communication has truly become a two way process. Whereas a TVC was a one way process, a monologue at its best, the digital era means that we need to involve and let the consumer participate in the communication. So its no longer about just bonding with the consumer. Its about letting him be part of a dialogue. Its not about making a TVC and then watching it work. Its about unleashing a piece of communication, tweaking it, adding to it and responding to the consumer interaction.

This means that the creative person who till a few years ago was content with grasping the nuances of film making today has also to be a technology geek. He has to understand and keep on evolving with the digital medium. He cannot just be an ideas person. He has to mould his ideas with the nitty gritties of the medium. So it is a complicated task.

And that's the reason I believe that the next breed of creative superstars will not be the creative types but the technology types who will be bold enough to experiment with ideas and ready to take creative leaps. These will not merely be a writer or an ideas guy or even an art person but someone who understands what digital is, what it can do, how it can work with the consumer and how it can enter into a dialogue with the consumer.

Yet another reason for the fading away of the TVC type creative person is the evolution of product and hence brands and hence marketing. Brands life cycle is becoming short. Brand differentiation in features is blurring. With technology progressing by leaps and bounds no brand has a feature edge for more than few months. You would say, well more reason to create a differentiated brand. But the truth is that the process of creating a differentiated brand has taken a back seat. It is now about, got it flaunt it. So there is less of brand build and more of brand sell. Less about a story, a tale and more about buy me why and buy me now. Its about seduction and not flirting. The message is about a feature or a price or an offer. That does not really need a story telling TVC. It needs an interesting way to pass on information and use digital to focus the message and get the consumer involved.

E commerce is the best example of the same. Flipkart started with some brand building TVC's but they have now moved on to deals, weekend offers, exclusive offers and so on. Amazon is all about offering more than 1.6 crore products. Myntra is about likes, Snapdeal is about the electronic sale....so where is the creativity...its all about offers, deals. They put up a TVC for information, but what they are creative about is digital media. How do they score there is what matters. So Flipkart seals an exclusive 30 days deal for Sachin Tendulkar's autobiography and uses Social Media to tap cricket fans, uses sites like ESPNCricinfo to tap their data base or banners in the live scores....that's what counts.

So for all you know the next superstar is actually a number cruncher. Maybe he is already there hidden behind all that data and charts. Thinking on how to differentiate in media and how to get more eyeballs, more likes, more hits and more consumer comments. Know anyone matching that description?